I can change [self analysis]

[chrisvenus]

I have written this over the course of the evening. Its me taking a look inside my head to try to work out why I'm feeling down at the moment. I've looked at the problem from just one angle, there are bound to be more but here is where the thought process took me. Be warned, this is quite long and its all about me. Feel no compulsion to read on, it was written for my benefit and not especially for other people to read.

I am living in a world of delusion. I look at my life and I realise that I spend far too much of it surrounding myself with make believe and products of my imagination. There's a lot of roleplaying in my life. Several characters all vie for attention in my head as I struggle my way through the day. But that's not what I'm talking about.

The delusions that make up my world are in the real world too. Not just the games I play. I surround myself with lies about the way the world is to make my world a better place but at the end of the day reality can't help but intrude on my life.

I'm not going to give specific examples. If nothing else it's embarrassing to admit the specifics of how I hide from the world and the lies that I tell myself and worst of all the lies that I believe.

For a time, they make things better. They make the bad things go away and the world doesn't hurt me. But of course it only ever delays the pain. It hides it behind a fragile wall where it grows until reality comes and breaks those walls down, releasing the pain, mixed with the fragments of the lie that bound it.

And what's my solution to this? Well, to try to take that pain and the fragments of the illusionary world that I use to hide reality and rebuild the walls to hide the pain... Yeah, it's a vicious circle but one I don't think I'm prepared to break.

The one good thing about this is that the bad things behind the wall *do* go away given enough time. I don't understand what it is that makes them go away though. Over time things fade away but I don't think time is enough. To get over pain you need to change as a person, you need to change whichever part of you gets hurt so that you are able to cope. There are things that bother me and I need to find out how to change myself to cope with them.

Changing yourself isn't easy. It's like in physics when you can't move an object without pushing off another object. I'm not sure whether or not you can change yourself on your own. On the other hand I don't know if you can change yourself with help either. In the past change has happened. It's never been a conscious choice, its never been something I've set out to do, its just something that has happened.

Over the years my philosophy of life has changed dramatically. It's been in the last 6 years mostly. Before that I'd never given it much thought and then I fell to depression seriously and it suddenly became important. I needed to work out a way to deal with things and to do that I needed a framework for everything to sit in.

Some people probably get by fine without. But I'm somebody who thinks a lot so I need to think about things to understand why I do what I do and why I am what I am. I needed to understand myself to be able to deal with myself because at the end of the day my depression has always been about me.

A lot of things trigger off my depression. All of them at a glance are external. How people act, what people say, and many other things can trigger my down patches. All of these are nice external things. But at the end of the day the reaction to them is an internal thing. It is something inside of me that reacts badly to the stimuli. Every time I get depressed, unhappy or whatever it is because of who I am. A lot of the problems I have could easily be solved by acting differently but those acts do not tie in with who I am. I need to tie in who I am with how things are.

To give a hypothetical example: I might be bothered by not having a proper holiday in years. I might get upset and depressed about it but at the end of the day I could probably change my spending pattern, rein in some expenditure, save up and go on holiday. The key thing in that example is the changing. I spend how I spend because that's how I want to spend, its part of what makes me who I am and changing things about me to fix my problems isn't as easy as it sounds.

I should note that the example is hypothetical. I haven't had a proper holiday for some time but the holidays I have had, to see friends about the place, is really fun. If you're going to comment on anything then don't mention holidays.

So I need to find a way not to change, not a big difference in the way I act, but just small, gradual changes to learn to cope with the bits of the world that manage to get to me. It's more a process of evolution than anything else. Maybe that's the process that I'm looking for, maybe it is just time that solves these things and I need to give my mindset time to evolve out of whatever it is that causes it problems.

I guess its not just time though for evolution. Evolution requires the random mutations that will either catch on or not. I need to drive this, I need to try new things, new outlooks, new ways of thinking about things. If they don't help then they can get discarded or kept, it doesn't make a difference. If they make things worse we throw them away but if we make things better then we are all double thumbs up.

So I think what I need to do right now is to do things. I had intended to go to the cinema today but never made it. I got an attack of the apathy and didn't want to go on my own having failed to phone around people to find company. I need to stop worrying about things like that. I'm not sure what bothered me but there was no reason why I shouldn't go on my own. There was just something inside that stopped me going and that is what I want to change right now.

And the first thing to try? I need to just accept the mental thought that if I want to do something then I should do it. I think the reason I didn't go to the cinema is because I didn't have anybody to go with and that was because I am not a big person when it comes to calling round people. There's a real example. I could have just phoned up loads of people but I don't like disturbing people with phone calls. I'm not a big phone person. I think today though I just didn't want to disturb people. There's a non-hypothetical example of what I was talking about above.

I could easily have phoned up more people. I'm sure I could have found people to go with. I just didn't. And then I didn't go on my own because I didn't want to be somebody who went to the cinema on their own. Both of these are things I could easily have gotten around but right now that wouldn't be me. But I just need to change this, simple as that.

This has been a long and boring post for most. It's really for my reference more than anything else. It's been good for me to write this and properly work out some of what's going on inside my head. It's probably of little interest to other people but after my last post it was quite nice to see some of the comments that said "Been there, done that, got the postcard".

No comments expected. This isn't done for sympathy. Nor is it done because I want help or advice. On the other hand comments are always nice so comment away. :)

Comments

[leathellin.livejournal.com]

I've always found the idea that going to the cinema on your own is in someway 'bad' a bit odd. It really doesn't mean anything apart from you wanting to see a film and not necessarily needing to go through the herding cats process to end up with some other people who happen to want to see it at the same time.
And watchinga film is hardly a social event either - how much conversation goes on in that couple of hours?

[http://users.livejournal.com/elle_/]

I think that everyone puts up walls between themselves and "bad" reality to some extent. That in itself isn't necessarily a bad thing... but I guess if you feel that the walls have got large enough to be a problem in themselves then you need to think about what it is that you're trying to avoid...

You're right that changing yourself is bloody hard work... but good for you for deciding to do it. That's the first step right there. You mentioned that your philosophy of life has changed in the last 6 years, is it too nosy to ask to what? Or is it undefined?

Oh, and the cinema thing? There's definite advantages to going on your own: 1) Noone talks at you in the critical bits
2) You can eat ALL the pick'n'mix
3) You can cry at the soppy bits and noone's going to laugh...

Anyway, good luck :) Peace, love and chocolate buttons.

[chrisvenus]

That's actually helped a surprising amount (on that point at least). :)

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure whether or not you can change yourself on your own.

In general terms it's definitely possible. When the desire to change exceeds the strength of the things keeping you from doing so then you will simply find yourself able to do it.

This is one of the reasons why apathy can be so damaging: if you don't desire anything very much, it can be very hard to do anything either.

[riksowden.livejournal.com]

I have to admit that i totally hear you about the film and phone thing - i hates calling people, even if i believe that they won't mind, it seems, i dunno, rude unless a call is expected.

And yes, its better to go to the pictures with someone[s] else.

Can't actually come up with anything useful though, sorry :(

[cardinalsin.livejournal.com]

You keep talking about "changing yourself". I think it can sometimes make it harder if you think about things in those terms. Really, you won't be changing yourself, you'll be changing your behaviour. After all, it doesn't require a fundamental change in you to pick up the phone once in a while to see if anyone fancies coming out. It might seem silly, but I think its important to realise that anyone who sits in at home all day on their own gets lonely, and this frequently leads to apathy, which only makes matters worse. Its not necessarily something about you as a person - its just that you haven't changed your situation.

I think its a good rule of thumb that, unless you specifically feel like doing nothing, you're better off opting to do something - even just going for a walk. Since this is naturally opposed by the rule of "I can't be arsed", which generally trumps all other rules, you can safely err on the side of doing more than you normally would.

Hope things pick up soon.

[chrisvenus]

It is changing my behaviour but there are reasons to change myself too. I am aware that it isn't a fundamental change to my core being but it is still changing me. My behaviour is determined by who I am as well as circumstances and I want to change how I behave in the same circumstances which means a change to me.

I don't phone people because I don't like doing so. Its hard to describe why but its probably a mixture of feeling rude for disturbing somebody and worrying about disturbing whatever they are doing. All it needs to get over this is to do it a few times and realise that it isn't that bad. However, crossing that first hump is where the change needs and then it will hopefully reinforce itself.

I suspect its all a matter of perspective but I think I know what you mean and agree with you. Its just looking at things from a different point of view and I hope that my point of view isn't going to make things any harder. :)

[magicalsushi.livejournal.com]

While I certainly don't have the answers, it's great to hear you're determined to sort this out. I can relate to the problem, and I think there's a good chance you'll be able to become happier now that you've made a definite decision to do something about this.

Just for the record, I go to the cinema on my own sometimes and don't particularly feel bad about it, and phoning friends to invite them out somewhere is about the only context in which I'm happy phoning people. But I can totally relate to the bit about holidays: not so much the holidays themselves, but more the bit where you pointedly explain that it's just an example. There's nothing more fustrating than when someone fixates on an example you give because they didn't really listen to the explanation of the underlying issue. As it's starting to sound like I'm doing just that, I'll stop typing.

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

I didn't go on my own because I didn't want to be somebody who went to the cinema on their own. Both of these are things I could easily have gotten around but right now that wouldn't be me. But I just need to change this, simple as that.

I've just come back from 2 months holiday on my own. Apologies for mentioning holidays, but it's my holiday, not yours. Also apologies if I sound like I'm gloating, because that isn't the point either. The point is that this forced me to do stuff on my own that I otherwise wouldn't, because I'd have been really really bored if I'd relied on only doing something if I could find someone random to do it with. So I don't think I'd ever been to a gig on my own before, but I now do so quite happily because I had no choice if I wanted to see live music at all, and it turns out not to be so terribly bad after all. I also went to some films on my own, but then I did that before.

So possibly one way to change behaviour that amounts to being habitual, is to put yourself in a position where you don't have much choice but to break the undesirable pattern. This way you put yourself in a new situation in order to learn something new, and perhaps to develop confidence in the alternatives to whatever you were doing before that you don't like. This may or may not result in a long-term change to your behaviour, but is probably worth a try if it's applicable to anything on your list of changes to attempt...

[accasha.livejournal.com]

hmmm - going to the cinema on your own... actually have always found that a very rewarding thing to do. I don't have to talk to anyone (antisocial I know but also very relaxing) and I don't have to dissect the film with others after. If you time it right you can often get space on your own (i find a cold hard stare at anyone thinking of sitting close work well) and itfeels like your own private cinema and thus can lose yourself in the film.
I only add this as I used to feel very intimidate by going solo to things but now I find it great. Sometimes in this world it is very refreshing to have some time to just be yourself with no pressure to live up to others expectations...

[chrisvenus]

I'm trying to imagine you giving a scary stare. I think I can picture it but not very well... :)

And yeah, that no pressure to live up to expectations is probably what I need more of. :)

[accasha.livejournal.com]

no believe me - scary stare has taken years of practice in the mirror. It's pretty good now

[chrisvenus]

You'll have to show me some time. I promise not to giggle. :)

[ms-saffie.livejournal.com]

The best thing I can recommend (and just about every shrink I've ever seen) is Manage Your Mind - http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0192623834/202-5940974-7109401

And to avoid phoning, when do you want to go for a drink?

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